by Garreth Byrne
A very special small shop in Sligo, Tír na nÓg, is up for sale as the founders prepare to retire. They want a new owner who will be dedicated to the spirit of a business which has promoted organic food and vegetables, health foods and wholesome lifestyle. Mary McDonnell and her brother John first opened the small shop in central Sligo in the late 1970s. At first there was a wholefood store at ground level and two flights of stairs above it was a vegetarian restaurant. After some years they moved to a new, narrower premises and concentrated on the wholefood business. Organic vegetables and herbs first grown by Rod Alston and Dolores Keegan at Eden near Rossinver, near the Fermanagh town of Garrison, from 1975 were first sold in the Sligo shop. https://www.neantog.com/…/01/03-tir-na-nog-is-for-sale
Dolores Keegan cultivated a range of herbal plants, about 40 or more species. Vegetables and herbal plants were supplied to Tír na nÓg initially while other outlets were found in Dublin, Donegal and elsewhere. Dolores printed a cyclostyled catalogue and posted it regularly to a gradually assembled customer base around Ireland. People in Leitrim and elsewhere made visits to Eden Plants to buy produce directly from the producers.
My first acquaintance with this place started in late summer 1977 after I had returned from two separate spells of teaching English and promoting school agriculture in Zambia. I rode, over two days, a pushbike (no gears) from Dundalk via Virginia and Kilmore to Manorhamilton. After buying a few groceries in the town, including a packet of Galtee processed cheese, I then rode about 10km to Eden. I stayed woofing there for three days (the afternoons were free) and observed what was going on. Then I cycled to Sligo via Collooney and Ballymote, my first visit to North West Ireland.
Woofing? you may wonder. It comes from an international network called Working Weekends on Organic Farms. People from various places wrote to farms on the list and arranged to spend varying periods of time as woofers. They worked for no remuneration but got food and sometimes spartan accommodation and an informal education in the theory and practice of organic farming and whatever else their hosts were interested in.
In 1981 I moved from Dublin to Sligo to work for a development education project that took me around four counties. Mary McDonnell and her brother John ran a vegetarian, wholefood and health shop in what may have been where the Cat & the Moon and Hamilton Gallery shop are now situated. On the ground floor was the shop and one climbed a winding stairs to enter the wholefood restaurant where Mary patiently prepared the ingredients for lunch and afternoon snacks. After a couple of years, the McDonnells moved to the smaller premises near what today is an Oxfam charity shop. Mary said goodbye to the restaurant business, which had taken up so much time and wasn’t possible anyway in the new premises. Nora married John and became a familiar worker in the shop. John opened a greeting card and craft shop on the other side of the street, facing what today is Kate’s Kitchen.
In the mid-1980s Rod Alston, Dolores Keegan, Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh and Gearoid Mac Eochaidh joined with a few others in Manorhamilton area to form a vegetable growing co-operative. Soon a shop was opened on the main street of Manorhamilton. Eibhlin and a woman called Frances O’Brien were often behind the counter and at the shelves to greet and advise shoppers. The shop was a positive contribution to Manorhamilton and functioned for about 14 years before shutting. The co-op also wound up as people moved on to other interests.
The North Leitrim Vegetable Growers’ Cookery Book
Published in 1985 by North Leitrim Vegetable Growers’ Co-op, Manorhamilton, it had an upbeat Introduction by Michael Viney of Louisburg in remote Mayo, writer on nature, rural living and environmental matters (Irish Times) and publisher of books on Irish nature through the seasons. He and his wife Eithne Viney are highly regarded for their life’s work. In the Intro Mr. Viney notes:
“In the quiet drumlin country of North Leitrim (not the first place you would think of as the garden of Ireland) a remarkable co-operative of small growers is selling vegetables in the local market town. The shoppers of Manorhamilton have a range of choice which French housewives, for example, would take for granted but which in Ireland is rare indeed.”
In the Preface by Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh, Gearόid Mac Eochaidh, Dolores Keegan and Rod Alston, they say:
“We grow and sell vegetables…We believe that vegetables should form a more central part of people’s meals, as opposed to being simply something to back up meat or the like.”
Eibhlin talked about the book and the co-op on RTE Radio 1. The book was sold in Mary’s Sligo shop and in wholefood shops elsewhere. The cookery book sold out. If money could be found, perhaps a second edition of it could be published, with a Preface outlining the history of the co-op. More co-ops of varying kinds are needed throughout rural Ireland. From this core group and assorted local supporters the idea evolved of the Organic Centre at Rossinver near Upper Lough MacNean.
The Organic Centre has earned a firm national and international reputation. It was developed on ordinary Leitrim fields, some partly swampy, to show that average land could be worked over time, using polytunnels and outside land partly sheltered by hedging and planted vegetation, to produce fruit, vegetables, herb plants and assorted shrubbery. It has always been a demonstration project, designed to attract families with children. Educational courses and weekend demonstration sessions are organized throughout the four seasons. The ideas of people like Mary McDonnell, Rod Alston and others above mentioned have by example, exhortation and practice had a remarkable impact in the North West and elsewhere.
North West Newsletter – Common Ground
A bi-monthly magazine emerged from Rossinver around 1976. It was initially a “kitchen table production” put together in someone’s kitchen by organic producers from Leitrim and Roscommon (Knockvicar). They typed out articles and snippets of information on waxed stencils which were then wrapped around the inked drum of a Gestetner duplicator. Simple drawings were inscribed on the pages with a sharp stencil. Covers were inscribed similarly with motifs, scenery and simple portraits of farm workers. The printed pages were stapled together and distributed in Sligo and other wholefood shops. Postal subscriptions were also encouraged. After a number of years money was found to enable the printing of what was now the magazine by t litho-offset printing, by a sympathetic printer. Appearance, sophisticated layout and colour photographs improved circulation. The magazine changed its title to Common Ground. After twenty years of existence a decision was made to end publication about 1996. One hopes that copies of this publication are in archival libraries in Sligo or Leitrim.
The Sligo-North Leitrim experience was not in isolation. From the 1960s and 1970s ideas and movements and the books of key writers like John Seymour, Rachel Carson, E.F.Shumacher and others had an international influence. A back-to-the-land movement started, with useful results for Sligo and North Leitrim among other rural parts of Ireland.